Serendipity was smiling on Arun Varshneya when he met Al Cooper in 1965. As Varshneya recounts during the Cooper Distinguished Lecture he delivered at the MS&T'12 conference, the two met when Cooper was taking a sabbatical year at Sheffield University (United Kingdom) where Varshneya was nearing the end of his undergraduate studies.

When people test-drive hybrid-electric or extended-range electric vehicles, such as the Toyota Prius or the Chevy Volt or the Nissan Leaf, the question came up, "What happens to electric vehicle batteries when they wear out?"